© Dan Kittwood/Getty ImagesA Gurkha regiment helps place sandbags outside homes along the river Thames in Staines.
Violent storms will batter cliffs and promenades along the south coast this weekend, with tidal surges and gale-force winds set to cause more flooding for days to come. Forecasters warned that there would be no let-up in the severe weather as defence chiefs committed 5,000 military personnel to the flood relief mission.
Two people were killed late on Friday in the stormy weather and the high winds left more than 16,000 homes in north Wales without power.
A cruise ship passenger died and another was airlifted to shore after their 22,000-tonne vessel was hit by a freak wave in the English Channel. Water crashed through a window, injuring a number of the 735 passengers. An 85-year-old male passenger and a woman passenger in her 70s were airlifted off the ship. The male passenger later died.
In Holborn, central London, a woman died and a man was taken to hospital after a building collapsed on to a car. The accident happened at 11.05pm last night opposite Holborn tube station, a Metropolitan police spokesman said. "There were two occupants in the car and a woman was pronounced dead at the scene. A man was pulled from the car and was taken to hospital, where he is in a stable situation at the moment."
A man also died in hospital on Friday night after being hit by a falling tree in his garden in Gwynedd during Wednesday's storm.
Comment: A wonderful example of just how far modern human society is from being "civilized".